Interesting. The "the war's happening anyway so let's direct it our way" sounds remarkably like a major plot thread in MI-5 that my wife has been getting into watching recently. (Though at least in these movies the good guys always win, so in that respect they're not like MI-5 at all.)

Figures that the ONE TIME I get down to the commuter cafe on time to watch an escapist video, eat lunch, and NOT have the site spaz out, you decide to do an article instead of a video. Sorry but I've been having a kinda shitty day. At least I understand why you did your review this way. Bummer that neither of these are any good, but I'm cramming for finals so I wasn't going to see them this week anyway.

Sabrestar:Interesting. The "the war's happening anyway so let's direct it our way" sounds remarkably like a major plot thread in MI-5 that my wife has been getting into watching recently. (Though at least in these movies the good guys always win, so in that respect they're not like MI-5 at all.)

All the drama padding in that show just turns me right-off. In one episode the take about half an hour just so the agents can find a way to justify killing a scientist who is selling nuclear secrets to Iran. Justifying it to themselves and not just killing the scientist, but killing someone at all. And NCIS may be formula copy-paste as fuck and the characters 2 dimensional, but at least I can see some color on the screen while I'm watching it.

Another thing both these movies have in common: I don't give a damn about either one of them.

I've kind of had a chip on my shoulder when it comes to the Mission: Impossible movies. The original series was about cleverly plotted stealth ops where the team had to get in, accomplish a goal and get out without leaving any evidence. The movies are about Tom Cruise faffing about in over the top action scenes and seeing how badly they can butcher an iconic TV theme song.

As for Sherlock Holmes, the modern day set British TV series is more interesting any compelling to me then the Robert Downey Jr. films have been.

Everytime i see Tom Cruise on screen i can't shake the feeling he is trying to squeeze his Body Thetans out through his pupils.

**Actual Fact**

The super intense stare of Tom Cruise is actually part of his Scientology Training. They are taught that they can influence and defeat people by staring REALLY intensely at people. It is part of their "Tech". Its built into the way they think and is actually part of a system known as the "TRs" whoch many consider the part of the intial conditioning for the Cult-Like structure and bat-shit insanity of the rest of the Scientology "Levels".

I wasn't going to see either of these films anyway, since I didn't really care for either of their predecessors.Why is Tom Cruise still getting acting jobs? It's a valid question. He was never a very impressive actor as far as I've seen and he's only gotten more and more off-putting as years go by. With each passing movie I see him in, Tom Cruise produces more and more of an uncanny valley effect on me.Maybe he'll eventually become so cartoonishly inhuman that it will stop bothering me, though. Like how practical effects that use puppets, even when the puppets are pretty badly done, don't put me off nearly as much as badly done CGI.

RJ Dalton:I wasn't going to see either of these films anyway, since I didn't really care for either of their predecessors.Why is Tom Cruise still getting acting jobs? It's a valid question. He was never a very impressive actor as far as I've seen and he's only gotten more and more off-putting as years go by. With each passing movie I see him in, Tom Cruise produces more and more of an uncanny valley effect on me.Maybe he'll eventually become so cartoonishly inhuman that it will stop bothering me, though. Like how practical effects that use puppets, even when the puppets are pretty badly done, don't put me off nearly as much as badly done CGI.

I couldn't disagree more. While he isn't Marlin Brando or anything he is a great actor who gives out consistantly solid performaces and doesn't take himself to seriously.

I watched the old Mission Impossible series as a kid (Sesame Street was for pussies :) ), and it occurred to me that the individual stories they had for those eps were far better than the main plots for all the Mission Impossible movies and Sherlock Holmes combined.

Granted the t.v series required a little more thinking to follow the story as it unfolded, especially some of the eps that featured move counter-move chess styled thinking, so I wonder now if "modern" audiences are incapable of thinking in these terms or being able to follow such a "complex" story?

DSQ:I couldn't disagree more. While he isn't Marlin Brando or anything he is a great actor who gives out consistantly solid performaces and doesn't take himself to seriously.

I think everyone can agree he was outstanding in Magnolia.

I think you're confusing good casting and good acting with the Magnolia.But you are right about "consistantly solid", as in he does every role the same and even the roles (as far as I can from his media outings) is not really "acting" but him just being him. He always plays guys who are overly invested in something with outbursts of extreme emotions, 90% of them being anger and the rest of the time they're extremly serious - Mission impossible, Colateral, Minority report, Few good men, Last samurai and even stuff like Top gun. BUT don't mistake that for the fact that some of the movies he was in were rather good and even "classics" like Rainman, Jerry M etc. but he acted the same.

I mean, you can say Nic Cage is a good actor, but he basically does the same thing and in some films like Face off (which I liked, doesn't mean you have to) it fitted well...so casting is key.

EDIT: about Sherlock 2 being bad - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, damn you cruel destiny, I have been looking forward to this movie for such a long time, I really liked the first one, might be one of the movies I watched the most times, I even watched for last New year. God damn it all to hell.

anian:BUT don't mistake that for the fact that some of the movies he was in were rather good and even "classics" like Rainman, Jerry M etc. but he acted the same.

I mean, you can say Nic Cage is a good actor, but he basically does the same thing and in some films like Face off (which I liked, doesn't mean you have to) it fitted well...so casting is key.

You may be right to a certain exstent however in terms of talent doing the one role you do well is a better than most and Cruise does his one role very well, like say Robert Deniro or in the directing spher Alfred Hitchcock...

Except for the fact that Holmes wasn't terrible, it was perfectly serviceable and it maintained a style that everyone asked for more of. Holmes maintained its style and created an interesting set of action pieces. I was more entertained by this than I have been by other movies of late.

Well, Bob, I'm going to go see Sherlock Holmes tomorrow, and if I end up liking it I think that will be your third strike as a trusted reviewer for me. Technically it will be more than three, but allow me my cliche, if you'd be so kind.

I resent his quote that Sherlock Holmes is far from the source material. The original stories were dime stories meant for the masses. Sherlock Holmes lived a bohemian lifestyle full of gambling, drug use, and fighting in between his cases. And he even was a master martial artist (specifically in baritsu, cane fighting). Holmes was "sophisticated up" over the ages into the straight-thinking, no-fighting detective. Even the ending in the second movie is completely similar to the original Holmes v. Moriarty story, Holmes tackles Moriarty over a waterfall. And Watson experienced the biggest changes of all in past cinema experiences. Sherlock Holmes originally was the pulp fiction action fare of the day, Guy Ritchie just updated it with explosions.

When are we gonna get beyond this quasi-steampunk nonsense? It's ridiculous, unnecessary, and overlaps some actual, historically accurate aspects of the era that people might be interested in seeing if you weren't replacing them with the INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION'S ANSWER TO IMPERIAL STORM TROOPERS.

Even Captain America is guilty of this. We get it, the war was fought and won, but it wasn't like the average GI had to fight cyborgs that shoot demons. You can make a plot (cliched as it is) like kick-starting WWI (or II) without having to resort to this. Hell, the movie would be more interesting if it didn't. But thinking is hard, so robots, won't you?

Even Captain America is guilty of this. We get it, the war was fought and won, but it wasn't like the average GI had to fight cyborgs that shoot demons. You can make a plot (cliched as it is) like kick-starting WWI (or II) without having to resort to this. Hell, the movie would be more interesting if it didn't. But thinking is hard, so robots, won't you?

I'm pretty sure the Captain America movie was just following the craziness from the comics. Just sayin'.

FallenTraveler:Except for the fact that Holmes wasn't terrible, it was perfectly serviceable and it maintained a style that everyone asked for more of. Holmes maintained its style and created an interesting set of action pieces. I was more entertained by this than I have been by other movies of late.

Also, why is it always so bad to play what you're good at playing?

Seconded.

I whole-heartedly disagree with you on Holmes there, Bob. Then again I'm on the positive end of the "Mixed" reviews. I love when Holmes does the prediction-deduction ability of his, and for the record he does it only 1 actual time. Minor spoiler that won't ruin anything but I'll put it in anyway,

FallenTraveler:Except for the fact that Holmes wasn't terrible, it was perfectly serviceable and it maintained a style that everyone asked for more of. Holmes maintained its style and created an interesting set of action pieces. I was more entertained by this than I have been by other movies of late.

Also, why is it always so bad to play what you're good at playing?

I thought holmes 2 was as good as the first, meaning if you hated the first dont bother. Most holmes purists destest ritchies version as its pretty far removed from the literary holmes. That said I enjoyed both movies, and thought they were actually much better than tin tin. I'm a BIG fan of herges books and the animations and thought the new movie was fairly flat and uninspired compared to both, so I guess this week is another case of sucker punch and expendables where I find myself disagreeing with bob entirely. Fair enough.

If I want GOOD Sherlock Holmes I'll watch BBC's Sherlock (the second season of which starts next spring). Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman have GREAT chemistry as Holmes and Watson and the plots never come off as forced-action schlock

EDIT: about Sherlock 2 being bad - NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO, damn you cruel destiny, I have been looking forward to this movie for such a long time, I really liked the first one, might be one of the movies I watched the most times, I even watched for last New year. God damn it all to hell.

Jesus dude, if you liked the first one there's no reason to not see the second one. What, Moviebob didn't like it? So what? You'll probably love it.

Interesting that you didn't enjoy Holmes 2. I saw it this afternoon and really enjoyed it. Having read through your article I can definitely see why you thought it was bad - they might have overused the thinking out the battle before it happens thing a bit too much. However, I thought it improved on the original, as the villain in the first never really felt like much of a threat, as it was obvious that his whole black magic thing would be a traditional 'cheap tricks to scare people until Holmes works it out' arc, which sort of undermined everything he did. Moriarty in comparison, though admittedly not the best Moriarty I've seen (see BBC's 'Sherlock'), was a genuine challenge to Holmes, and the final conflict was a clever reworking of the final conflict between Sherlock Holmes and Moriarty in the original stories. I personally enjoyed the fight scenes, as they broke things down into the piece-by-piece analysis inherent in any Holmes narrative. I never felt confused during the fight scenes - everything was clear and well-constructed.Having said all that, it's certainly a film which I can easily see as having divided reception, and I enjoy reading constructive criticism to something I enjoyed and otherwise wouldn't have examined in such a way. Thanks Bob.